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The support team is the entrance channel as well as exit channel for developers. Having a specialized and available team to deal with any partner issue that may arise before, during and after development will assist in resolving problems more quickly. From the moment that service is needed, it is important that this team is prepared to respond in a clear and effective way.
It is necessary to stipulate a service SLA. So that, all tickets received are solved as soon as possible and the developer does not need to wait a long time or prioritize to get a return.SLA metrics enable identifying gaps in the service (is your team efficient? Has it responded to all tickets promptly?). It will also identify if the team is overwhelmed and needs more analysts to support the requests and tickets.
A criticality scale view is also important. We understand that all requests, even those with basic questions, are important and need an agile answer. But from the moment we have this view, it is possible to focus first on the most critical items and those that can generate a greater impact (such as a systemic unavailability, problems in generating access keys, and others) and, in parallel, address other issues based on the High, Medium and Low classifications.
In addition to stipulating these two points, it is also important to monitor the service satisfaction level.This metric will offer inputs to identify how the service provided to partners is and if any improvement is necessary, such as starting to answer with clearer or more objective information, requesting information when the ticket is opened in order to obtain all the necessary data to answer the question, or better traceability of the problem (for example, adding certain key information fields so that they can be filled in when the ticket is opened).
Sharing some of the experience of the team where I work, Developer Experience, it is through our support service that we feel the needs and difficulties of developers.Our customers even have X time to receive the initial response.A best practice that we also implemented, and that will provide greater value with this initial response time, is the fact that we do not configure our services with standard responses (which are found in many other places - and are sometimes of great help in optimizing the flow when the team is overwhelmed).In our service, from the beginning, we try to understand what happened and resolve the issue as soon as possible.Of course, sometimes the problem may be out of our control, such as something related to the backend, but it is with fast service that we are able to speed up forwarding the question to the responsible team and consequently fix it as soon as possible.
It is important to have the view that, if there was a need to contact support, such as opening a ticket, this person is waiting for an answer and often has interrupted their activities, plus the inability to proceed with a particular action.Hence, it is important to have a close look at all these issues, monitor the service backlog (open requests and those that are pending), the metrics to identify gaps and, consequently, have constant alignments and improvement actions to optimize the service.In a support team, it is important to put ourselves in the person's shoes and remember that an agile, clear, and quality service will bring good returns and satisfaction.Remember that a support channel is the entry and exit path for starting a development, effective partnership and the satisfaction of those who contact this channel.We have already mentioned in other posts the importance of ensuring a good experience for developers, after all they are also part of your customer portfolio. Especially in the service process, it is extremely important for the devs to feel supported in an agile and empathetic way. After all, when something is not going as expected, we want a solution as soon as possible.
